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Damping fluid or no?

rebonz

rebonz

Active Member
I have an SME V arm and have not been using any fluid in the dampening well. I would like to know if others are using any and if so what fluid you would recommend. I can't bring myself to purchasing the syringe of SME silicone if there is something else that works that wouldn't cost me an arm and a leg. I am using a Nagaoka mp200 cartridge at the present time. What benefits would I gain if any?
 
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I have never put the oil in any of mine so I can't say if it improve or not. If it was me and felt the need to try I would just use oils I have from my old RC racing days. The shock oils came in all kinds of weights, 5,10,20, and on and on.

One of my Series V arms came without the reservoir, it was completely removed. When I did some research I was told some people felt the oil dampening changed the sound and in fact the reservoir bolted to the arm hinders the SQ. Truth I cant tell with side by side identical tables,carts and staging.
 
Thanks for the reply. I also raced RC cars back in the mid to late eighties. I have some bottles of shock oil floating around the house somewhere.
 
What frequency is your tonearm/cartridge resonating at? We always shot for 11 to 13 hertz, the fluid helps you control that resonance.
 
That is too high so you need to increase the tone arm mass. I always keep some lead flat stock around to do this.
 
My Blackbirds which is what I have on this arm are Frequency Response:
10Hz-50Khz.

Am I good to go?
 
Record warp is 4-10 Hz.....some records, think big pipe organs, have 16 hertz notes. We would try to get the resonance between those two.

Low mass arms allow you to add mass, it is tough to take mass away.

My favarorite test record to use was from Ortofon, that young lady announcing the test frequencies had to be a hot scandinavian girl. Much more pleasnt to listen to than the dry guy on the shure v15 test record. The test records let you hear the distortions at the resonant frequency and often you can see it happen.

We would dial in the resonance then add fluid and try different paddles to dampen what could be aggressive vibrations.
 
Last edited:
4-2-7 said:
How did you get that?

When your cart is Frequency response: 20Hz-23kHz
Click to expand...

You have to calculate your resonance frequency. You need to know the mass of your arm and the weight of your cartridge plus the compliance of your cartridge. If you do a Google search for a calculator all you have to do is plug in the numbers and you get a chart.
 
4-2-7 said:
How did you get that?

When your cart is Frequency response: 20Hz-23kHz
Click to expand...

It is a mechanical resonance, the frequency your cartridge and arm wants to resonate at......yea high school physics rears it's ugly head again.
 
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